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At a Memorial Day speech, Barack Obama erroneously said his great-uncle was part of the brigade that liberated Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Apparently, those familiar with world history know that the camp was freed by the Russian Army and not American forces and Obama’s uncle was actually helping liberate some other concentration camp.

Okay, so we lambasted Hillary for getting the facts of her landing under sniper fire wrong, so Barack has to eat some humble pie on this one and apologize for getting it wrong. Yup, did that. So let’s move on. Nope, people want to continue to harp on this. If he was so proud of his uncle’s accomplishment, he would have gotten it right, right?  Well, not exactly.

As any amateur geneologist can tell you, getting the facts of family history absolutely right is a bear. Sure, Obama’s speech writer should have done some fact-checking before using the factoid in the speech. But really, especially when dealing with family traditions, it can be hard to let the facts get in the way of a great story.

My husband, for example, has an uncle that according to some members of the family was a high-ranking official at the Mobile Naval Station in the 1990s. I have yet to be able to verify this information via an outside the family source and we do not have contact information for that uncle. So, it makes a great story to tell, but it is probably a matter of perspective and what one calls “high-ranking”.

Likewise, there was a story in my family about great-grandfather’s adoption. The story was that his parents were killed in accident, perhaps involving a train, about the turn of the century and he was adopted by the Morgan family years later. He went to live with the Morgans when he was 3 or 4, but they didn’t officially adopt him until he was 17. Then, the story goes, his adoptive father was dying and wanted to make sure my great-grandfather wasn’t cut out of the will.

Turns out, part of the story is true.  He was taken in by the Morgans when he was 4 as they needed more hands for the farm and his own father had left him at the county orphanage after his mother died. It seems his father was remarrying and the new wife wanted to raise her own children, not the ones from her husband’s first marriage. Talk about a wicked step-mother! 

My great-grandfather lived with the Morgans until he was an adult and they did indeed finally adopt him when he was 17. He called his adoptive father “Mr. Morgan” until the day he died. The story is more colorful perhaps, but certainly not the same as what the family had been taught.

I don’t know the Obama family, but if it works like other families, the chances are that Barack heard the story told one way his entire life and never thought to question his uncle. And, to be honest, I never knew it was Russians who liberated Auschwitz. I grew up in the height of the Cold War and I believe my teachers simply said Allied forces. After all, the USSR was the great enemy then and it might have hampered American pride to admit that our enemy had liberated the best known of the concentration camps.

Does it really matter what camp Obama’s great-uncle was at? Auschwitz is the most infamous of them, but that does not mean others were less brutal or less important for liberating.

What does matter is that Senator Obama needs to verify what he has been told and taught in the future. It’s an importnat lesson for the future president to learn and one better learned via a Memorial Day mistake than a mistake that leads the nation into war, into a financial crisis or a diplomatic faux pas. Yes, he made a mistake and admitted it. As long as he learns from it,  I say, no harm, no foul.

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